3 Caples Copywriting Tips

This week I’ve been rereading Caples’ ‘Tested Advertising Methods’…

A book David Ogilvy said is “Without doubt the most useful book about advertising that I have ever read.”

Here are my 3 key takeaways:

  1. Success in marketing comes from A/B testing, nothing else

You can spend years brushing up on best practices and sales psychology. 

But the only way to know if an offer is going to work is to present it to the market, and track the results.

  1. Finding the most effective ‘appeal’ is the first vital step of any campaign

Good news for us is that we don’t have to painstakingly track the codes on reply slips, like in Caples’ day.

With Facebook ads you can spend a few hundred dollars testing your ideas…

And potentially save you tens of thousands launching campaigns which don’t resonate with no hope of success.

  1. Your copy must combine “reason why” logic with emotion

Been rereading Caples’ ‘Tested Advertising Methods’ this week…

Here’s another key takeaway…

There are two types of copy: ‘Reason why’ and ‘emotional’. 

‘Reason why’ copy presents the logical arguments to get nods of agreement. 

‘Emotional copy’ gets into the areas of the brain where love, hate, fear and desire are found. 

You need to weave together both ‘reason why’ and ‘emotional’ copy to get the sale.

Think of your sales page as a long thread… 

And you have to keep tucking in both the logic and the emotion to hold it together.

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